AT&T to Implement Mobile Banking

The wireless division of AT&T has signed agreements with BankcorpSouth, Regions Financial, SunTrust Banks and Wachovia and will offer a mobile banking program to subscribers. Users will be able to pay bills electronically and manage accounts with an application from Firethorn that resides on the handset. The software will be pre-loaded on phones beginning in the second half of 2007. The service will be available free of charge and follows an extensive trial conducted last year. No word on when the service will actually be available, but AT&T is planning a large marketing campaign for later this year.

All four of these banks are big in the Southeast, and Wachovia and SunTrust are both big in the Mid-Atlantic states. (Here in Atlanta, Wachovia, SunTrust, and Regions all compete against each other, as well as against BB&T, BofA, and WaMu; BancorpSouth mainly competes against Regions in Mississippi.) I would have expected AT&T to be a little more exclusive (i.e., not striking deals with multiple competitors with substantial overlap) than this, and I would have expected them to not completely ignore large parts of the US -- but then again, AT&T doesn't seem to have nearly as large a share of the wireless market in the upper Midwest, Rockies and West, except perhaps for California, than in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic states.